The
Ties That Bind
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Instead,
Berzinski puts his trust in the Townsville Thuringowa Adult
Tutor Group, a free service run by volunteers and a few paid
staffers out of a cramped building in the suburb of Aitkenvale.
There people with literacy or numeracy problems learn to write,
read maps and complete official forms. "I've never been a
good speller or reader, and you need those kinds of things
now to get a job," says Berzinski. "When I was young, you
didn't-you could walk out of a job and into another one the
next day."
For many,
Townsville is still a place of opportunity. But it also has
its share of unemployment, drug abuse, divorce and violence.
When Tony McDermott moved to Townsville to become director
of Centacare, he inherited five staffers and an annual budget
of $A300,000. Eight years on he manages 70 workers and spending
has grown to $A3 million-and people still have to be turned
away. "Life is getting a heck of a lot more complicated for
many people," McDermott says, "because of things that never
troubled my parents' or my generation." Townsville's Family
Emergency Accommodation service last year could help only
150 of the 600 families who sought assistance. "People at
the bottom feel that there are fewer services which are very
stretched; that the gap between them and everyone else is
getting bigger," says coordinator Ruth Meikle. "They get quite
angry at times, feeling they haven't been given a fair go."
A nation,
like a community, can be judged on how it cares for its most
vulnerable people-and in the way its citizens live together.
Crime rates in Townsville are on a par with those nationwide,
but, says community policing coordinator Snr. Sgt. Paul Caswell,
"it's a big country town-more than half the break-and-enters
come from unlocked doors and windows." The city has also had
success with the trial of a community policing program that
makes one officer responsible for a given neighborhood. Yet
here, as elsewhere, there is a perception that the days of
tight-knit neighborhoods are ending. "There's not a lot of
social cohesion," says McDermott. "People come and go so much."
Frank Hornby, director of community and cultural services
at Townsville City Council, says neighborhood support is damaged
by the transience of the population: "Once you would have
had mother, father, grandchildren and grandparents all living
here. Now you don't. We're affected by mobility, but that's
not all bad-it opens us up."
Henry Parkes'
"crimson thread of kinship" still runs through many suburban
streets. The local basketball and rugby league teams bring
people together, as have cyclones and other natural disasters.
A quieter camaraderie also survives. Vi Felmingham, 76, has
lived in the same house in Garbutt, with a giant mango tree
in the back yard, for 41 years. Her neighbors on both sides
have been there almost as long, though there are more and
more unfamiliar faces further down the street. The Townsville
of Vi's youth-where swagmen would wait outside the unlocked
family home until her mother came home and gave them food
in return for wood chopping-is gone. But she'll never move,
she says: "It's still a good place. We have no trouble."
The bonds
of neighborhood are not just for long-time residents. Sharyn
Heslop and her family moved into a new home in the rapidly
expanding suburb of Annandale a year ago and are still watching
new homes going up around them. A neighbor had a barbecue
to welcome them; the Heslops did the same for their new neighbors.
Their children play and fish together. "We look out for each
other," says Sharyn. "We don't intrude on each other's privacy,
but we're there for each other if need be." Many feel the
warmth of the place. Chip Henriss-Anderssen, a former U.S.
marine and now an Australian Army major, moved to Townsville
in 1995. "My wife didn't know how we were going to spend two
years here," he says. "But now we're not leaving. When I leave
the army, I'm going to keep working here. We love it."
A sense
of local identity stretches beyond the cul-de-sacs. This is
a town that prefers to think of itself as the capital of North
Queensland rather than the nation's 14th largest urban center.
People from south of Brisbane, a two-hour flight away, are
commonly labeled "Mexicans." Residents speak proudly of their
do-it-yourself attitude. "We fought for a long time to get
services here," says Hornby, a 20-year veteran of the local
council. "There's a resilience here that comes from being
able to get things done."
There are
many echoes here of the mood of 1901. Like their forebears,
people in Townsville still like to see themselves as capable
and fair, tough and adventurous. They still hope their children
will grow up in an egalitarian nation. They still love their
country-fourth-generation sheep farmers and recent migrants
alike. The tests of modernity have left them less exuberant
than those who cheered Federation day a century ago. But they
are still pioneers, not of a new nation but of that nation's
new place in a changing world.
-With reporting
by Leora Moldofsky and Michael Ware -Townsville
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January 8, 2001
| No. 1
SOUTH PACIFIC
COVER:
A Town for the Times
As Australia celebrates its centenary, Time visits Townsville, in Queensland,
to see how the nation has-and hasn't-changed.
Great Barrier
Reef: Profiting from a natural wonder
Coral Philosophy:
The fight to preserve the environment
Aiming North:
Townsville's strategic importance grows
T
H E A R T S
ART:
Australia reviews its first century with a colorful Big Top of an exhibition
TRAVELER'S
ADVISORY
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